vacation

Enterprise upgraded me to this cute little Jeep at no extra charge because of the possible pending snowpocalypse later this week.

Because of some work being done on the plumbing at my in-laws house, we got to drink bottled water the whole time I was there. I even brushed my teeth with bottled water. Whoever said book tours were not glamorous was obviously not me.

And raspberries in Utah in winter for breakfast? Living the high life.

Arriving at KSL Studios in Salt Lake for the taping of Studio 5 with Brooke Walker. None of the other guests had an entourage. I felt sad for them.

I had on my TV interview shoes.

And they gave me a mic.

They did not let me keep it.

They shot it like it was live, pausing between segments just long enough for commercial breaks and adding in titles, B-roll and voice-overs as they went.

Brooke was super nice and easy to talk to. She should do this for a living.

We both have excellent posture.

My sister caught this picture of me right before I went on. Nervous much?

And afterward, we got silly in the fancy chairs.

Then off to see my sister’s office in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. Gorgeous view from her floor.

Afternoon Drops of Awesome talk with friends old and new in Saratoga Springs.

Fun fancy “liquid awesome” Mary Kay stuff from one of my favorite people Myla and a thematically appropriate gift from Sina. Aren’t these cute?

I stopped by the temple where Dan and I were married and recreated this picture all by myself. I miss my boyfriend who’s at home winning Husband of the Year while I live it up in the UT.

Then fun times with the nieces and nephews at my sister Heather’s house.

We’d been driving for hours and we were tired. I pulled out my phone to find an inexpensive place to stay for the night and I saw a few options. Everything in our price range had Meh reviews so I went with the cheapest one, even though I sort of knew it wouldn’t be good. We drove into the parking lot and it was confirmed. This wasn’t going to be pretty. But I was tired and I decided to stay there anyway.

As we took the rattling elevator up to the second floor with a rough looking man and his dog, I began to seriously question my decision. We walked down the long, dim hallway, noise greeting us from nearly every room and the choking smell of cigarette smoke radiating from the walls.

We locked ourselves into our filthy room, helped the kids brush their teeth, checked for bed bugs and turned out the lights. The room was cold, dark, and noisy from the heater and the neighbors to the right, left, and above us. It smelled horrible. But we’d paid for the room and we needed the sleep before we started out on the road again the next morning. Wanda, a year old at the time, stood up in her pack ‘n play and screamed, reaching out to me and Dan in our cramped double bed. I picked her up. I sang to her. I comforted her. I laid on the stained carpet next to her and shushed her to sleep.

We didn’t get much rest. We had a horrible night. And we paid a hundred dollars for the experience. To put it mildly, we regretted the decision to stay there.

But the rough night was over. What could I do to fix the problem? I could apologize to Dan and the kids for my poor hotel choice, for not planning ahead and for not getting us out of there once I knew how gross the hotel was. I could decide never to stay there again.

What could I do to make the problem worse and ensure we stayed miserable for years into the future? I could decide that it was a tragedy that I’d chosen such a skeezy road trip hotel because since I’d chosen that hotel once, we were doomed to stay there every road trip for the rest of our lives. I could talk about how awful it was non-stop and decorate our home to match the hotel just so that every day I would remember what a bad choice I’d made. I could turn that hotel into the focus of my life.

Now that seems ridiculous, but how many times do we let our mistakes determine our entire future? Or even enough of our future to make us waste one day or one week in crippling regret? I recently said some things I regret. Stupid things. Thoughtless things. Things I thought were funny during a moment of heightened stress. I apologized to the people involved. I prayed and asked God to forgive me.

But the next day I still felt awful. How could I say those things? What did those things say about me as a person? How could my friends ever look at me the same way again? Should they ever look at me the same way again? These thoughts of shame and regret cycled through my head over and over again.

So because I was so upset about my mistake, I decided to live in that mistake for as long as possible. If it was a bad thing and I didn’t want it to be part of my life, then why did I let it take up so much time in my thoughts and in my heart? I had done everything I could to fix it… Except let it go.

By focusing all my energy on my poor choices, I was magnifying their negative effects in my life. I was decorating my house with pictures of the bad Hotel.. And I was succumbing to the inevitability of booking a room there again.

“That’s where I always stay. It sucks but I stay there.”

When you are bogged down by the things you’ve done wrong, you start to believe that you have no choice but to do them again, that it’s just the way you are, that you’re somehow defective or incapable of changing. If, after all, you spend your time dwelling on them, you aren’t changing.

Now, do I want to completely wipe the bad hotel from my memory? No. Not exactly. I want to remember it just enough at the back of my mind so I avoid going there again. I don’t want to think about it, but if the experience is buried way down deep in my brain, it can pop to the surface if I ever drive through that town again and find myself looking for a place to stay.

Next time I’m hanging out with my friends and I come to a place where I can go for a cheap laugh or speak words of love, I hope I remember just an echo of what the cheap laugh felt like and I hope I make a different choice. But for today, I need to let it go.

Today is so much bigger than yesterday’s mistakes. Today is a thousand choices waiting to be made and the first one will be to live where I am, because with the next choice I make, where I am can be a pretty beautiful place.

Between bouts of illness, we had about 24 hours to squeeze in some fun last weekend. The planets aligned just in time for us to head out on a short vacation to the Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA. They were hosting a special blogger event with discounted pricing and a blogger breakfast meet-up and we couldn’t pass up the chance to go back there. We had so much fun the last time.
This time they were promoting their Snowland experience, the lodge decorated from top to bottom with snowflakes, sparkles and lights. Santa was there and a few times a day they did a “holiday show” and had a real fake indoor snowfall. Of course it also still had wolves and things that are great and lodge-like things. Hence the name.

I’m a big fan of Great Wolf Lodge. I love the way my kids’ gray matter explodes when we go there. They can’t put into words how much fun they’re having but they keep spontaneously giggling and their faces are split into ridiculous half-insane grins the entire time. Since we got home, Magoo’s been saying “Thank you for the Great Wolf Lodge,” every single night in his prayers. I also really like that all the employees, no matter what their job title, greet you and make eye contact when they see you in the halls.

There were a few things I don’t like. I don’t like this:
The check-in line was insane. It’s nice that business is so good at the Lodge but they need to find a more efficient way to process all those visitors.

I’m also not a fan of animatronics.
We missed the nightly story time last year because we were frolicking in the water. This year we were sure to dry off and get there in time for what turned out to be sort of an underwhelming, hard to hear, semi-creepy animatronics extravaganza followed by a real live story time. The kids enjoyed it but I think they would have been happier in the water. I know I would have.

Wanda shocked us all by tolerating the whole experience quite well. Being inside the water park itself was like stepping into a giant white-noise machine and put her quickly to sleep. She was warm enough in her little swimmy suit with a towel wrapped around her and in a year she’ll be having a blast in the kiddy area. Her only trouble came late that night when everyone else was sleeping and she wanted me to stay up and rock her on the couch while watching Jeopardy on mute.

You know how unfulfilling it is to watch Jeopardy on mute and never know if your answers are right? What is – VERY frustrating? Luckily within minutes of starting that late night ritual I got a text from one of my blogging mom friends who was hanging out with some of our ladies down in the restaurant. They’d all put their children away and were enjoying some nocturnal girl time. They took turns passing Wanda around until she was zonked and I headed back upstairs and put her to bed. It was lovely and much more fun than mute Jeopardy.

Overall I’d still recommend taking a trip to a GWL if you have one near you. Your kids are guaranteed to have an awesome time and you’ll likely enjoy yourself too, especially if you like your children. Personally, I’d rather go when they’re back to doing what they do best without all the plasticky holiday noise. I don’t really want my kids to associate Christmas with lavish water parks and crazed animatronic moose and trees singing carols. I guess I’d rather have them associate it with storm troopers and old dead artificial foliage.

Read my other review for more details on why we’ll likely be back. Also – a tip – pay for the buffet for one meal and then bring the rest of your food from home. The restaurant was okay but nothing fabulous and it’s worth the money to watch your kids freak out over the sheer volume of choices they have to choose from in the buffet.

We were out of town a good chunk of last week and I completely spaced picking a winner for the Maggie Maternity giveaway. I also spaced the fact the I need a stronger deodorant when I’m in Utah. Lucky for most of you, you weren’t with me in Utah so you wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t publish it on the internet. I’ll have some vacation details once I’ve recovered from our travels, including our stay in what appeared to be a post-apocalyptic KOA Kampground.

Anyway, here’s the winner.

Commenter number 7, known as Pibble (I’m guessing it’s an alias.) has won the Maggie Maternity gift card. Congratulations!

We recently got back from a family reunion in Montana where I spent 10 days hanging with my parents, 4 siblings, 2 siblings-in-law, 2 nieces, one nephew and 2 dogs in one house. It was a blast. However as the week drew to a close, I started noticing signs that it was time to pack it in and head home.

Here are the top 5 ways you can tell the family reunion is over:

1. All of your conversations degenerate into inside jokes, unfinished sentences and quotes from The Princess Bride and Star Wars.

2. You become so overcome with your niece’s cuteness that you start measuring suit-cases, looking for a place where she can comfortably stow away.

3. You come to realize that you’ve consumed every last morsel of food in the Billings area and have gotten almost too fat to fit in your van for the ride home.

4. After several nights with less than 5 hours of sleep because you can’t stand to be parted from all your best friends, you find yourself bursting into tears over an injustice in a card game and storming away from the table like a spoiled 5-year-old.

5. Your own children begin referring to you only as “Auntie Katie.”

So you can see the bangs in this picture, fresh from the religious hair salon. They don’t look their super-awesomest because I was more worried about getting one single picture of the whole family without either of the kids pulling crazy faces than I was about my hair. Alas. The price of motherhood.

My time with Erin and her little babies is drawing to a close. There are signs in abundance that it’s almost time for us to go home for the last time this summer and get back to our normal routines. This afternoon Magoo painted their glass patio door with spinach dip. Laylee bit Magoo’s hand while they were “trying to get to sleep” and told me she did it “just to be mean.” They’re both acting really strangely and I’m starting to think that the world’s most portable kids do not want to be ported all over the face of the earth ANY MORE.

On a more positive note, I fell asleep this afternoon holding both of these in my arms!

I over-schedule. I want to do everything and be everything when I grow up. I want to grow my own food and bake bread and make my home a haven of educational bliss, moral perfection and impeccable scrabble playing. I want to have it all. So I plan and I scheme and carefully stagger all kinds of activities and then spend my life flying from one thing to the next until the kids beg for mercy in the form of flopping like a dead fish on the floor of the grocery store and alternately laughing and bawling for CANDY FWEEZE!!!!

Every once in a while the elements of my life combine in just the right way to create a perfect storm of domestic insanity. The latest in this series of “WHAT THE SUGAR IS MY PROBLEM?” moments came last Thursday and nobody’s heard a lot from me since.

Thursday is bread making day. I do not plant the wheat but I do buy it in impossibly large white buckets, let it sit in my garage for years, finally learn how to use my wheat grinder, grind it, and make my own bread. It saves money. It tastes scrumptious thanks to Sarah’s recipe. It makes me feel cool when I say, “I make my own bread,” because bread preference comes up so often in conversation.

At this point I make 4 loaves of bread each week, giving one away so that “I make my own bread” can come up in casual conversation and keep the other three so “PEANUT BUTTER SAMMMMMMITCH FWEEZE!!!” will be able to get the response it so richly deserves. All day Thursday, I’m working on the bread.

Well, a woman from church was ordering a bunch of peaches direct from a grower and asked if anyone wanted to buy some at a discount. Eve convinced me that canning peaches would be the Best Thing Ever so I put in my order and we waited. TA-DA! The peaches arrived on Wednesday, with about one day of life left on them before they would need to be canned immediately.

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll be home all day making bread anyway. I can throw some peaches in that canner thingy while the bread’s rising. It will be perfect. I even have a book that will teach me how. Oh, and I’m also hosting a Mary Kay extravaganza for Stephanie that night so I can work on the hors d’oeuvres and desserts while the peaches are boiling.”

The book was obviously written for someone who is literate and likes to read for hours and hours in ecstatic anticipation while they watch their glorious fruit ripen, not someone who wants a quick how-to she can read while stirring the cheesecake batter as the bread kneads in the Kitchen-Aid. I tried to skim-read and pump Stephanie and Heather for information as I scraped the skin off the peaches and tried to remember what dad-gum-awful peach chores I did with my mom when I was a kid and she asked me to “do this please” and “do that please” as she created blue ribbon peaches fit for the fair.

My peaches would not win any prizes at the fair. They are brownish and sort of hairy and Laylee has sworn never to eat them. I made the last batch into peach “sauce” by taking out my aggression and smashing any peaches that were left in my kitchen to a pulp and throwing them in jars. It’s actually quite lovely.

The bread which I decided to take a risk on and make 100% whole wheat looked good but tasted nasty. The cheesecake took a tumble. The goat cheese frittata triangles were cold by the time we ate them and my stove looks like I covered it with corn syrup and then fire-blasted it with a blowtorch. My makeup, however, looked ultimate and I got a big enough discount to feel justified buying $50 worth of skin care products I probably didn’t need but would certainly enjoy.

I continued to can peaches all day the next day with Eve, went to a couple of doctor’s appointments, cleared junk out of several rooms in my house for the neighborhood garage sale I’d organized for the next day and hopped back and forth on my feet trying to rest them one at a time. Our 5 kids ran crazy like a pack of ravenous attention-starved wolves. My floors became so sticky I couldn’t hop on them anymore.

At about 9pm on Friday night we had finished all the peaches but I hadn’t hung a single sign or priced a single piece of cheap junk for the garage sale the following morning. I had no change to hand to prospective buyers who planned to hand me a $50 bill in exchange for my used toothbrush and $49.87 in change. I had not an ounce of brainpower or bodily energy left so I called off the garage sale.

My neighbor had recently told me she was worried about me. Every time she talks to me I have a new project in the works, a new hobby or responsibility. Every time she looks out her window I’m either leaving, running in the door or stopping home for 30 seconds to change clothes or pick something up on my way to the next thing. She said something that really struck me, “If your life is crammed full of so many things, you won’t have time to enjoy any of them, even if they’re all things you really love doing.”

In the end, I’d rather eat WonderBread and peaches from Costco if I’m gonna drive myself nuts in my need to say, “I MAKE MY OWN DANG STINKIN’ WHEAT BREAD!!!”

She was right. So I stayed home all day Saturday with no garage sale, slept in late, had some special time with Dan and the kids, didn’t work, didn’t clean, hired a babysitter and went on a date. It was fabulous and I felt so renewed. We had friends over for dinner Sunday and then Monday morning I headed down to Boise with the kids to “help” my friend who’s just given birth to twin boys. She already has a 2 and a 4-year-old boy. I love being with her and her totally sweet kids. I just hope I can be more help than trouble.

I thought there was a lot of truth in Jessica’s post the other day, when she talked about how sometimes things run more smoothly without all the help, regardless of how helpful you think it is.

I’m here for a week and I’m helping around the house while taking a mini-vacation and bringing baby hunger to all new levels. Dan is holding down the fort in Washington, working a bazillion hours from home and at the office. Hopefully I’ll be fresher and more Daring when I get back, with an all new minty taste.

Do you need anything from Wal Mart? They have plenty of those here… and cheap produce… and babies.

Some people call them “bathrooms.” This is strange. For the most part they contain no bath tubs so I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to work. False advertising I say.

Some refer to them as “restrooms.” Also odd. There’s very little I find restful about these facilities, especially public ones, especially with little people who must EXPERIENCE every surface with as many body parts as possible.

In Canada they’ve decided to go for positive message reinforcement. They call them “washrooms” to remind all people that no matter how much you’ve experienced in the room, there’s always a simple solution — WASHING yourself.

This comforts me.

Especially when I go into washrooms as nasty as the one where I found this sign:

Now, if I saw a sign like this in a washroom where someone had accidentally spilled a piece of urine, I might go up to the employee and inform her of the unfortunate marring of her otherwise fabulous palace of human waste.

However, when the washroom itself seems to be made of sludge, with greasy grime so thick I could carve my name on the walls with the lollipop stick on the floor behind the toilet… if I could pry it loose, I assume the employees know exactly what the room looks like or they’re blind. And if they’re blind, I’d really not like to be the one to force them to swab that scum-hole.

In other washroom news, I found Canada to be rich in baby changing tables. I found these instructions amusing:

If my child is old enough to lay out a table liner, fasten herself in, change herself, and dispose of the garbage, I figure she’s old enough to be left unattended whether or not stars will spurt out of her head. She’s probably old enough to be potty trained too, come to think of it.